FALL RIVER – His batteries recharged and with the required thumbs-up from his wife, Bill Shea is back as head boys’ basketball coach at Bishop Connolly High School.

The Connolly graduate replaces the man, Matt Coute, who replaced him three years ago. Coute this past spring left Connolly to take the head job at King Philip High School.

Under Coute, the Cougars won the state Division 4 championship in 2013 and went to the state semifinals last winter. They also qualified for the playoffs in 2012.

Shea had coached the previous 27 years at Connolly, the last 21 of those as varsity coach.

Shea, 53, said he had no comeback notions until Coute, Connolly’s career scoring leader and one of Shea’s former players, left for King Philip.

“First I got my permission slip from my wife to think about it,” Shea said. “I guess three years off kind of re-energized me. It took about a week or so before I decided to throw my hat in the ring.”

Shea said he is very familiar with Connolly’s personnel. Over the last three years, he watched many games and some practices and actually helped Coute out in practice a few times.

While Connolly just graduated a very strong senior class of basketball players who enjoyed successive trips to the TD Garden, Shea has a rock-solid foundation in all stars Konrad Bradbury, a 6-foot-6 center, and 6-1 sharpshooting guard Dylan Bradbury, the team’s leading scorer last winter. Shea termed the duo two of the best players in Division 4.

“And a lot of these kids came to my (basketball) camp. I’m certainly familiar with their game. They’ll just have to get used to me,” he said.

They may find Shea the high school coach and bit different from Shea the camp coach. Laid back was a term rarely used to describe Shea during his previous tenure at Connolly.